


Love is a Garden

by givemeunicorns



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bisexual Steve Rogers, Character Study, F/M, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-12
Updated: 2014-09-12
Packaged: 2018-02-17 01:25:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2291834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/givemeunicorns/pseuds/givemeunicorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's mom had told him once that you never love the same way twice. She said love was a garden, cultivated with beautiful things, all of them different and captivating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love is a Garden

**Author's Note:**

> Snippety thing I found that i decided to finish.
> 
> disclaimer: i don't own these characters and i make no money from this.

 

Steve's mom had told him once that you never love the same way twice. She said love was a garden, cultivated with beautiful things, all of them different and captivating.

Before the serum and hydra and the war, he'd tucked the advice away in his brain. Because he only loved one person in the world after she was gone, loved right down to his soul, and that was Bucky. Bucky who watched his back, Bucky who helped spring for cigarettes, for raw liver, for medicine when he couldn't afford it. Bucky who tried to talk him out of fighting, tried to talk him into keeping his trap shut, but never put him down because he was small or because he was sick. He was sure he'd love Bucky until he died which, given his conditions, he didn't figure would take all that long. He knew it was morbid to think about but Steve, in that at least, was a realist. The docs said he probably wouldn't live to see forty, between his lungs and his heart, his poor stomach, his wacky blood sugar, and, how poor his immune system was. He figured they knew more than him on the subject. Bucky wouldn't talk about it, so Steve kept the thoughts to himself.

These were the facts. That one day Bucky would met a girl and get married and have a family. He'd have a good life and Steve would be happy for him, but it wasn't the kind of life Steve ever saw himself having. He liked girls, thought about them a lot, the same way he thought about guys. Girls made him nervous, made his palms sweat, made him stutter. He was better at hiding it around fellas. But he'd never felt for a girl or a boy the way he felt about Bucky. Bucky knew, Bucky loved him too, had said it so many times after too many drinks, or when Steve was so sick they were both sure it would really be over this time. But they knew it wouldn't happen, couldn't happen, because that was the way the world worked. Maybe in they could scrap by in gay neighborhoods but their weren't many places that wanted to hire known queens. Steve could sell his art but an artists didn't make enough to pay for the things Steve needed. And if they got arrested, Steve knew he'd never survive prison. Neither would Bucky, with his big mouth.

At least they had each other, at least they had the darkest stretches of the night when one would reach out and grab the other's hand in the dark and just hold on for a minute. It was like a knife in his ribs, the first time he'd seen Bucky in his uniform and he _knew._ Bucky would go to war, likely die in a fox hole in some foreign stretch of dirt, fighting a war that he didn't believe in half as much as Steve did. He'd be left here, with nothing more than the memories of a few drunken kisses and long nights spent huddled together trying to stay warm. Just another grave to visit. 

The moment he pulled Bucky off the cold table in Zola's lab, that heat came alive in his chest again. He loved Bucky but now he could protect him in a way he couldn't before. Steve knew he wouldn't grow old with his best friend, wouldn't kiss him and hold his hand when was ill. But he could bring him back alive, could give him a chance to meet a girl and live to a ripe old age, give him a shot at hero's metal and a family. In the dark of their tent, when Bucky reached across and brushed Steve's hand in the dark, he told him he thought Peggy was a beautiful gal and that he was happy Steve had finally found someone who could love him like he deserved. Steve said Bucky'd find someone one day. Steve fretted and Peggy would smile at him, would take his hand in her own in her quite way. She knew, he was sure, about the love he kept in his heart, nestle close and quiet next to his love for her. Not greater or less, not weaker or stronger. Level, equal, just different. He would smile at her, that shy smile that had seemed to fit him better when he was smaller. Peggy he could spend his life with, they could be happy together, because from Peggy and for her, he never had to hide. He'd figure out the rest later. He didn't know the end would come so fast.

Peggy Carter waltzed into his life with her red lipstick and half smiles and posh heels and Steve's world was thrown for a loop. He didn't believe in love at first sight, not even a little, but there was something about Peggy that reeled him in like a fish on a line. It wasn't love, not then, but it was more than attraction. It was admiration, respect, awe. He didn't so much want to be with Peggy at first, because how could you be with someone who was so far beyond your own plane of existence. He wanted to be _like_ her. Peggy was strong in a way that Steve had never imagined possible. She was steel underneath her flawless skin and she wore her lipstick like war paint, like the celtic warriors in his art books, who marked themselves for battle. She didn't bend in the slightest when men gave her that passing glance. Steve wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry the first time he'd seen a man tell her to go grab him a coffee. She'd smiled at him, sweet as could be, as she'd poured her own scalding cup down the officer's pant leg, with the cheeky reply of “Was that hot enough sir?” 

Peggy made him feel like he was invincible, even before he was. Peggy was his foundation. Peggy was the one he would look too when he thought his arms would give out or his heart would stop or he couldn't run another step. Looking at Peggy, meeting her eyes and seeing that look. _One more, you can do at least one more._ Then he was finishing the set like everyone else. It was Peggy he looked too when he went on the slab, heart pounding against his bird boned ribs when she turned over her shoulder to look back at him. When the serum took affect, and all eyes were trained on him like he was some perfect fusion of basic biology and modern technology, Peggy was the only one who looked at him like he was still a human being, who remembered he was still just some skinny, sickly punk from Brooklyn who desperately wanted to do the right thing.

Looking at Peggy, he knew his mom was right. He didn't have to pine for Peggy, because she was there, real. She wanted him the same way he wanted her, and even though the missions had been dangerous and the work had been hard, even after he thought he'd lost Bucky forever, it still felt like they had time. They were wrong. He knew the moment he kissed her, he'd never get to do it again.

He was right and wrong. Because the woman he came home to was not his Peggy, not the youthful, strong willed , straight-spined Peggy. This Peggy had lived a whole lifetime without him. She'd found another love, she'd started an agency to protect the world from threats like Hydra(never knowing that they had wormed their way into her great work; for Steve that was among the most unforgivable of Hydra’s sins). She'd had a family, children, grandchildren, friends, who'd never seen him outside of the pictures she kept, who'd never seen the fire in her eyes when she looked at him or the adoration in his. She'd made the life she needed to, she'd made a life she'd loved. Years and experience had changed her, as time was want to do. Not for better or for worse, just simply different. She'd become a person he didn't know. He came home to a woman who's life was in it's twilight, fading into the quiet of night, and her memory with it. He loved her anyway.

It hurt him, selfish as he knew it was, to watch her leave him. Twice he'd had to watch his lovers go. One so quickly he didn't have a chance to even lift a hand to help him, haunting him because, even with super strength, he couldn't move fast enough. The other slowly, by degrees, so much so that it's a relief when the last breath left her because she hadn't remembered who she was in weeks. At the funeral, he shook hands with her children and her grandchild and tried to keep back the tears. To them, he was only a story, a life and time before them. In some ways they knew her better than Steve ever could, in some ways he wondered if they knew her at all.

Sam Wilson was the one that changed everything. Sam was a nice guy from the start, not star struck by Captain America, not afraid to crack jokes or take them. Sam's gap-toothed smile made Steve's insides melt a little, because he'd always did have a thing for a good smile. Then Sam asked about his bed, talked about how hard it was, after you've spent so many nights sleeping on the ground. He didn't talk about the fact that it was more than that; that it's the way the hair on your arms pricked up every time the wind changed, or the waking up to reach for a weapon that wasn't there, ready to call an order to men who are no longer with you.

Sam Wilson was a soldier, in the strongest of terms. Ready to fight for what he knew to be right, ready to follow who he felt deserved his loyalty. Sam gravitated around Steve in a way Steve wasn't quite prepared for. Bucky had always been the one out in front, ready to stand between Steve and the world, even after Steve was super. Peggy was an iron willed force at his side, unyielding and ready to aim at anytime. But Sam always seemed to Steve's right and a little behind, Steve's wingman, ready to jump in if the time came, but also seeming to know what battles Steve needed to fight on his own.

So when Steve woke to the smell of antiseptic and the smooth voice of Marvin Gaye in the air, when he looked over to see Sam Wilson dossing lightly in an uncomfortable hospital chair, it hit him. He half whispered “on your left”, and was rewarded with those brilliant brown eyes and sleepy half smile and he knew he loved this man and he was surprised to find that, unlike all the moments and stolen glances he'd made in that run down brooklyn apartment, just a couple of poor punk ass kids, there was no fear or guilt or shame. Now he was living in a time where could love a man like Sam, where he could be openly and unapologetically loved back.

Sam Wilson loved him in a way that Steve was not throughly prepared for. The kind of love that grounded him, that pushed him when he needed it and stilled him when he felt like the world would fall out from under his feet. Nothing about Sam was guess work or blank pages. Sam was honest about where he was, who he was, what he wanted, but he never pushed when it came to those kinds of things. He let Steve be the first on to reach for his hand, let Steve be the one to kiss him, let Steve be the one to crawl into his bed. Sam was good at waiting, Sam was good with patience.

Sam was an ready heart and open door. Ready to listen at three in the morning when the nightmares were just burrowed too far under Steve's skin for him to fall back asleep. Ready with a beer and tv remote when Steve is too wrung out after searching for Bucky to do anything but sit and stare. Sam who never took any bullshit, who never allowed Steve to wallow, who called it as he saw it with a raw sort of honesty that Steve needed at his worst. Sam knew what it was to carry your pain with you, he'd learned to tuck it in his back pocket, but he also knew that that took time. He didn't expect Steve to be okay, didn't offer the same unhelpful reassurances people felt the need to offer. Sam was hand on his shoulder or the small of his back; steadfast.

Steve thought about his mom sometimes, visited her modest grave. He told her about them all, about the friend he'd loved and lost and found again. About the woman who'd seen a hero in him when he'd struggled to see it in himself. About the soldier who'd helped him find his way in a brave new world. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he could almost see her there, with that clever smile on her face. Mother knows best, she seemed to say and he couldn't help but agree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
